Mount Athos Microcosm of the Christian East

Graham Speake studied classics at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was awarded a doctorate by the University of Oxford for a thesis on the Byzantine transmission of ancient Greek literature. He is the founder and secretary of the Friends of Mount Athos and author of Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise (2002), for which he was awarded the Criticos Prize. He is also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Kallistos Ware holds a doctorate in theology from the University of Oxford where from 1966 to 2001 he was a Fellow of Pembroke College and Spalding Lecturer in Eastern Orthodox Studies. He is a monk of the monastery of St John the Theologian, Patmos, and an assistant bishop in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain. In 2007 he was raised to the rank of metropolitan.